Pathetic cowardice stalls Bayers Road widening
From The Chronicle Herald.
I enjoyed this and have highlighted what I thought was one of the funnier lines.
The cowardly, inept, irresponsible refusal to govern continued Tuesday down at city hall.
For the umpteenth time in the past umpteenth number of months, the dithering ninnies who comprise Halifax regional council deferred making a decision on a regional road network plan.
Why? The excuse offered by some councillors swirled around the concept of awaiting a review of the regional development plan, which was passed five years ago.
Seriously? A review of the regional development plan? And just how long might that take? I’ll stick my neck out and say it will be probably take umpteen months . . . or umpteen years.
Central to the discussion of the road network plan — besides the obviously pathetic lack of political fortitude — is the utter cowardice of council members to deal with the proposed widening of Bayers Road. It’s been what, about 20 years or so, since the additional widening was proposed?
But of course there is an election next year. So the plan to refuse to deal with the road plan for a year simply means that this time next year, council will again refuse to look at it. They will say — as they have on so many other controversial issues over the years — that it should be left for the new council to deal with.
There are, after all, municipal elections in October 2012. Whew! That should provide at least one more year of breathing room. No decision will be needed for another while yet.
So there is another victory for the commuter gridlock that has drivers pulling their hair out, and businesses vacating the downtown as quickly as they can sign a business park lease and load the transport truck for a suburban destination.
Halifax is a so-called city. It has lots of little streets and a few big ones. On the peninsula, in particular, they are pretty much overburdened.
Still, it is OK to spend millions of millions of dollars on new interchanges, expressways and intersections in the burbs, but don’t you touch one shingle on a downtown roof in the name of better transportation. It’s a heritage shingle, after all. And a few more buses and better bike lanes are all the so-called city needs to sort out its transportation woes, right?
They call it a road network for a reason: One working roadway leads to another. New interchanges are A-OK for Highway 102 — the massive Larry Uteck exchange and the pending Washmill exit on the highway are the best examples. But the drivers who are being encouraged to use Highway 102 to get into the city find they come to a screeching halt when they hit Bayers Road.
At this time of year the congestion is so bad that vehicles are backed up to the Highway 103 merge lane from the South Shore that is supposed to feed even more vehicles onto the 102. Why? Because Bayers Road is a nightmare that successive councils have refused to deal with. It is a safety hazard, in addition to a juggernaut of failed transportation policies.
This is just wrong. The councillors may talk until they are blue in the face about wanting to revive the downtown, but these are meaningless, empty words if there is no workable road network to provide access to the downtown. Transportation staff have laid out the numbers and the options repeatedly over recent years, but council refuses to move.
Providing better transit is not the answer. It is part of a transportation strategy, but it won’t fix traffic volumes that are already here, thanks to Highway 102. And those traffic volume numbers are going to go up in the years ahead.
We wonder why the downtown is struggling? Heck, just try getting there some weekday morning in September. Question answered.
What this city needs is a government. One that is willing to govern, unlike the so-called government it has right now.
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